The best bike city in America? That’s Seattle, apparently

Originally published October 10, 2018 at 3:29 pm
Updated February 20, 2019 at 4:17 pm

Bicycling Magazine cited new bike lanes, like the protected one on Second Avenue, in naming Seattle America’s best bicycling city. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)

Bicycling magazine is lauding us for building protected bike lanes, lowering vehicle speed limits and opening up the streets to private, stationless bike-share companies. We ranked fifth on the same list in 2016.

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Ask the furious bike haters: Bike lanes are to blame for worsening traffic. And for the lack of parking. Police were called in after fireworks were found in construction equipment at a controversial bike-lane project in Northeast Seattle.

Traffic Lab is a Seattle Times project that digs into the region’s thorny transportation issues, spotlights promising approaches to easing gridlock, and helps readers find the best ways to get around. It is funded with the help of community sponsors Alaska Airlines, CenturyLink, Kemper Development Co., NHL Seattle, PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company and Seattle Children’s hospital. Seattle Times editors and reporters operate independently of our funders and maintain editorial control over Traffic Lab content.

Bicycling magazine recently named Seattle the best bike city in America, lauding us for building protected bike lanes, lowering vehicle speed limits and opening up the streets to private, stationless bike-share companies. San Francisco comes in second, according to the magazine, and Fort Collins, Colorado is third.

Seattle ranked fifth on the same list in 2016.

The cost of some of Seattle’s new bike facilities has both raised ire and led to debates on how much of that cost should fairly be attributed to bike lanes, or represents just general street upgrades. But we do have some nice, new, bike lanes and paths.

“Very few bike lanes in the country are being built with the attention to detail that engineers in Seattle are using,” Bicycling magazine wrote, citing the new Second Avenue bike lane and the Westlake Avenue bike path.

The magazine credited the city with building the Second Avenue lane with bike-specific traffic lights, planters and concrete dividers to separate bikes from car traffic, and even noted the rails at intersections for cyclists to lean on when they’re stopped.

The magazine rated cities based on safety — using metrics like cyclist deaths and speed limits — bike-friendly infrastructure, biking enthusiasm and bike culture. Enthusiasm was judged by, among other things, how much bike-friendly legislation is passed.

Portland, which traditionally rates near the top of such lists and has a bike commuting rate that’s more than double Seattle’s, ranked fifth on Bicycling magazine’s list. The city was faulted for building far fewer protected bike lanes in the past few years than peer cities, like Seattle and San Francisco.